Friday, April 3, 2015

@Defenders of Wildlife #Wolf Weekly Wrap Up

See the incredible story of OR-7, aka “Journey,” on the big screen!
We are excited to announce three upcoming opportunities to see the
story of OR-7 on the silver screen. Defenders is hosting a screening of
the award-winning documentary film OR7 – The Journey,
in Spokane, WA on April 3rd and 4th. The film details the ongoing
legacy of OR-7, a young, male gray wolf born in northeast Oregon who
traveled more than 1,000 miles to southwest Oregon and California. The
documentary describes not only the remarkable journey of OR-7, but the
ongoing fight for gray wolves to fully recover and achieve sustainable
populations in their historic territory. The film will be followed by a
question-and-answer session with the filmmaker, and a panel discussion
with some of the nation’s leading authorities on wolf recovery and
successfully coexisting with wolves. As wolves have started to return to
Washington, the post-film panel discussion and Q&A are designed to
provide information, updates, and details about how members of the
public can stay informed and get involved. You can find tickets for the
event here.

And, if you’re not in Washington… One of the nation’s premier environmental film festivals, the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, is now on tour and coming to Flagstaff, Arizona on Saturday, April 11th. This year’s festival also showcases OR7 – The Journey. Join Defenders and our conservation partners at the screening to support wildlife and re-live OR-7’s incredible journey!

Experts weigh in on benefits of “ranching done right”:
Defenders recently organized a session at the Society of Range Management’s annual meeting which focused on spreading the word about strategies for effective coexistence with important predators like wolves. Temple Grandin attended the session and wrote an article summarizing four key takeaways
on how and why wolves and livestock can both inhabit the same
landscape. The key is “ranching done right.” Grandin stresses the
importance of removing dead carcasses, along with sick, weak and injured
animals from grazing areas. She also notes that “the indiscriminate
killing of wolves or coyotes is a bad idea,” as it can disrupt packs
that are not known to prey on livestock. Encouraging cattle to learn to
herd and flock together and human presence are effective proactive
measures that reduce predator-livestock conflicts. Defenders works with
ranchers on range riding projects that use these methods to help keep wolves, and livestock safe.

Study shows different fladry designs can improve success in nonlethal management: Defenders has been a long-time promoter of using various tools and methods for nonlethal wildlife management in areas inhabited by people and livestock. Fladry,
the use of brightly colored strings of flags, is one method that has
proven helpful in keeping wolves and other predators away from
livestock. Researchers have found,
however, that simple shifts in design of the flags and the ropes can
make a big difference in how effective the fladry is. In order to keep
the flags flying as a signal to wolves, and not getting wrapped around
the rope (which reduces their visibility), investigators created six new
designs and compared them with the most commonly used design. Two of
the new designs showed better performance at no significant additional
costs. This is great news for helping conflicts that could lead to
wolves being killed and we look forward to incorporating this new
research into our coexistence projects in Idaho and in Washington.

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone